


more than earthly meat or drink

by riverbed



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Anal Sex, Deal with a Devil, Faust - Freeform, Grief, Horror, M/M, Oral Sex, Rimming, Supernatural Elements, Witchcraft, john doesn't die first isn't that nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 17:02:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7276429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbed/pseuds/riverbed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>A live man, acting as a corpse,<br/>Wasting away, and rotting,<br/>Till he merely dies of living.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>These walls and these partitions,<br/>Bow and sink towards perdition,<br/>And if we don’t look about us,<br/>Their decline and fall will rout us.</i>
</p><p>john told himself he was angry over hamilton’s decisions. but in truth, on the days when he felt weary and hopeless and miserable and was convinced that the war would never end, it had been comforting to know there was something older than all of them out there in the woods. something that endured.</p>
            </blockquote>





	more than earthly meat or drink

**Author's Note:**

> me: yeah i absolutely wrote nearly 10k of hamilton faust retell, what do you mean i might need a Break
> 
> also inspired by the witch (2015), which i'm sure you'll recognize in the stylism toward the beginning.

_ He who holds the devil, hold him well; _

_ he hardly will be caught a second time. _

 

* * *

 

War is hell. John hacks his way through brush and flesh, wet crimson soaking leaves and garish red-dyed fabric. The soil, mud, now, in the chilly October wet, sticks to his boots while at camp and to his horse’s shoes while moving. It makes them sluggish. The light of day lasts but 8 or so hours, a long, dark night settling in predictably round 5 o’clock each evening. John, though normally a live wire, succumbs to restless early sleep. Alexander spends it doing… whatever it is Hamilton does. John falls asleep to the scratch of his quill and wakes up to the same, just like always. It seems more frantic lately. He gets like this in phases. John isn’t altogether too worried about it. He does like waking to the candlelight, the knowledge of Hamilton there, safe, close by. It’s those moments that set the thoughts John hates loose - the tiny lockbox in his mind which holds the bad things.  _ This war could never end _ floating soft through the grey matter, a perversion and a comfort as he drifts back off to the rhythmic flicker of Alexander’s light.

Tonight, though. John is uncharacteristically wired. He has been stuck at camp for a week too long, and his internal clock has reset itself. He doesn’t do well with waiting out strategy - Tallmadge has been colluding with Washington for far too long, if John has any say in it. He doesn’t. He even manages to bite his tongue around Ben, because he’s accepted now that Washington considers him a son as much as he does he and Alexander, and he knows provoking Washington isn’t worth it.

He kicks a ball of wadded-up paper so it bounces against a tent. He whistles as he lowers the bottle of whisky from his mouth, swings it back and forth at his hip. There are soldiers seated round a campfire, and they hoot at him as he ambles past. He raises the bottle to them, tips the neck to his lips once more to let the burn wash down his throat. He’s got a good buzz going. Could go for something sloppy or stupid or both.

He seeks out Hamilton.

Alexander is in his predicted spot, trusty as ever, scribbling away at his manuscripts. John knocks into him, bends down and wraps his arms about Alex’s shoulders to palm at his chest from behind and above him, and turns his face into Alex’s hair, nuzzling and then pressing a wet kiss to his cheek. Alex squeals and returns the kiss but then he turns back to his writing. Laurens looks over his shoulder at it, somewhat dejected. “Surely you’re ahead of schedule,” he says mournfully. Alexander grunts and shrugs under him, and John feels the delayed exhaustion sink finally into his bones. He sets the bottle, quarter-full, on the desk beside Alexander’s documents with a sigh and shuffles his feet across the floor to his cot, curling up in his blanket for a blissfully drunken sleep.

 

* * *

 

He’s groggy when he wakes. The pull of the whisky tempts him back to sleep, but John blinks his eyes open, adjusting to the dark.

Dark. No light. He shifts, tries to see toward Hamilton’s side of the room, tries to make out the familiar figure of the man in his cot but it’s flat but for the mussed edges of the blanket he tosses and turns under in the blinks of sleep he tries at. John knits his brow, trying to will away the beginnings of a headache. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed he stands in his stocking feet and the breeches he’d never stripped off and pads to the front of the large tent, feeling in the dark for the handle of Alexander’s worn-out chamberstick and fire steel. He strikes the steel at the wick and gets it lit, and then pushes the flaps forward, immediately regretting his lack of shoes as he realizes it had rained. The dampness soaks into his stockings, and he hisses, but forgoes retreating to put on boots, as the damage has already been done.

Where to look. It’s possible that John had simply chosen the moment Alexander had gone to relieve himself to wake - but Alexander is stupid, and would have left the candle burning. The wick had been cold. And where would he have gone without a candle, in any case?

The camp is quiet. Two owls are hooting at each other from some distance, arguing sleepily. John treads softly, not wishing to cause anyone stir. As he passes their commander’s quarters, he snickers under his breath at the utter silence - he doesn’t think he’s ever been awake while Washington’s asleep, as the man is known to be up late, pondering and brooding. Self-flagellation, Billy says. John believes it.

Upon reaching the outskirts of camp there is no sign of his companion. John looks about, holding the flame out ahead of him to be sure of no danger from animals. There’s nothing rustling in the brush. The night is still, and John feels a shiver run through him not from the cold but from the eerie bend of the night, the moon obscured by big grey clouds into darkness. John feels the hairs at the back of his neck prick up.

A third owl hoots much louder from his left side, and John starts, turning toward the noise. He palms his pistol, slid into its holster at his hip, out of habit. And then he sees it - it is obscured by the top fold of the tent that sticks out most from this side of camp, but it is there, the tiny flicker of a fire through the trees to the west. Cursing, and a little nervous, he trods toward it, barely remembering to keep quiet while stepping carefully around the bear trap set at the edge of the forest. He is excited, wondering what Alexander could be up to, feels the giddiness that comes along with secrecy rise in him like the passion of a teen-age girl. The little bit of anxious energy, the crispness of the air - it all lends itself to a sense of adventure.

John snuffs the candle with his palm as the light of the campfire becomes more substantial. He holds the chamberstick against his chest, the edge of the saucer pressing into his breastbone, hand still closed around the top and feeling the heat leave the wick to coat his center of his hand in the slickness of a slight burn. He licks the ash from his palm. The fire is getting nearer. His gait paces quicker, excitement thrumming in his blood. He realises he is about upon a clearing; the trees are getting fewer and further between, and across the way he sees empty field. The flicker from the flames is still to the left, off the little footpath, so he won’t be able to see directly until he reaches the clearing itself.

He does. Or, he’s pretty sure he does, though it must be a dream in hindsight; he must be still at rest in his cozy bedroll, hidden away from real things that can’t be real. But he remembers each movement very clearly: his two feet fall into place from his final stride. The round edge of the candlestick in his chest, hardest at the middle where it’s closest to him and dulling as the circle curves away from him. The wetness of his hand, sweat, against the shiny ceramic of his pistol’s handle. The distinct feeling in his knees as they buckle, and then the way they sink a bit into the ground with a squelch as he lands upon them.

Alexander is… levitating. Couple inches above the grass, not outright floating, certainly not flying, but he’s not standing. And he’s glowing. The fire below him is burning proudly, yes, but the luminescence emanating around him is distinguished by its blackness; an oxymoron, John knows, this bright blackness. He can’t get his mind to parse it. He can’t see Alexander’s eyes, he’s too far away to see Alexander’s eyes but John swears there is a pool of blackness filling them, so deep and slick he feels the weight of time, all the time that has happened and ever will, yanking at his wrist, tempting him to enter a door he instantly knows must remain locked. He can’t see Alexander’s eyes, but then Alexander’s eyes flick to his and there is a sudden flash of yellow in them that matches the tips of the flames licking the stones round the fire and it’s as much a threat and the last sensation John registers is the limpness filling his spine as his shoulders crumple and he is pulled by the weight of his own head to the ground.

 

* * *

John, coming to, registers immediately the pure terror coursing through his blood and then the cause of it. His feet slip as he scrambles to stand, and he falls back again, landing hard on his tailbone, wind knocking out of him. Pain and fear well up in his chest and he wants to  _ scream  _ though he can’t find his voice, wants to fling himself into the ravine at the other side of camp and sink down and disappear. Alexander - or whatever is controlling Alexander - is on the ground now, though the black swarm around him has not dissipated entirely. The fire is burning low on its embers. The matching black shine for his eyes has returned and John finds himself strangely calmed by the fact; those bright yellow slits turned upon him had felt like being pierced with the tip of a knife. John watches him, still wanting to scream, still without breathing. Alexander must know he’s here. He must know he’s been found doing… whatever it is he’d been doing. John is about to be swept to Hell and there’s nothing to be done about it because he can’t speak or breathe or fight or even stand. The adrenaline that had propelled him up at first is gone and in its place is fear freezing him where he sits in the mud.

The moment stretches on, and then rain in a sudden heavy pour washes out the last of the fire and seems to cleanse the air enough so that John can breathe it once again. He takes a deep, shuddery pull in through his nose and lets it straighten his back. He calculates a method for escape even as he attempts it - pushes off the ground with his hands and rolls into balance from his heels to the balls of his feet. John is no stranger to falling. He can get up again. He can move. He turns and sprints back, camp a blur until he shoves his way inside their tent and strips off his clothing and huddles up into his blanket, shivering violently though not from the cold. He resists the urge to scream until the shakes coursing through his body make him cry with their intensity, and his head is splitting and his throat is raw and he buries his face into the pillow and lets the tears pour out of him just to get some relief.

He hitches his breath when slight moonlight comes in through the entrance - Alexander peeling back the tent flap, his muted footfalls as he steps through, the rattle of the iron chamberstick on the desk beside the striker. More footsteps on the packed earth floor, tentative, as he steps closer to John’s bunk. John begs and prays but doubts God is awake to listen. He thinks of Alexander laying a hand on his bare skin as he has done so many times before and now imagines a burn in the shape of his hand when he pulls it back.

But Hamilton doesn’t touch him; he just stands there. John can feel his presence acutely, every bit of it looming over him, calculates given his height exactly how much advantage he has over him in this moment. Whatever Alexander is possessed by can be taken care of by a gunshot, surely.

John swears under his breath as his hand trails down the bed to rest at his bare hip. His pistol is across the room, of course, with his discarded clothes. He presses his fingernails into the skin, hissing under his breath and mentally cursing himself for being such an idiot.

Behind him, Alexander hums and seems to come to a decision. John hears the hit of the steel against flint, the flame which crackles back to life, the rustle of papers and then the scratch of Alexander’s quill as he returns to his writing.

 

* * *

The next day is spent on sideways glances and active avoidance.

And exhaustion. John had listened to the faint sound of Alexander’s pen gliding across the paper till dawn, when he had risen with his blanket still around him and hurried from the tent with a fresh change of clothes to the river to bathe. Alexander had not followed him and had not glanced back from the desk as he’d moved about.

Now, the evening hush is setting in again, and John steals a new bottle from Washington’s stash, guiltless. He heads out to the woods, wandering aimlessly, hoping vaguely that he’ll get lost and eaten by some kind of wild and vicious beast. Whatever he’d seen the night previous fucked him up. He can’t stop thinking about Alexander’s eyes, deep brown as he knows them turned black and slick. Yellow flashes of hellfire as they’d been cast upon him. He downs another hearty swig of the alcohol - wine, this time, sweeter and quicker to his head with how little he drinks of it - and leans against a tree. He doesn’t bother to look around him till he hears the scratch of movement through the woods and then he realizes he is in the same spot he was last night. He rolls his eyes, tips his head back and sips again. Figures. Come what may.

Of course, what comes is - Alexander, obviously, who else would be out here in the woods at night? John still isn’t sure why  _ Alexander _ is out here in the woods at night. There’s a spark in him that’s determined to find out, but the rest of him wants to keep as far away from whatever it was he saw Hamilton doing as possible.

Alex stops short when he sees John, blinks at him from a few feet away. John slams his head back against the tree and ignores him. He groans when Alexander approaches, flinches and whines as he reaches out for him physically. Alexander’s fingertips brush his shoulder, and John sinks from the touch, feeling the rough ridges of the bark grind into his back as he goes to the ground.

“John?” Alexander squats down in front of him, his head inclined, his eyes wide with concern. John tries to look down into his bottle rather than getting swallowed up in those eyes. He feels trapped, frozen by whatever seems to seep off of Alexander since he’d seen him last night, this strange dangerous energy. He recoils, folding in over himself. He feels like a child trying to hide.

Alexander won’t speak, just keeps staring at him with the same empathy as if John had fallen and scraped his knee. He seems to be waiting for John to initiate the conversation he knows is inevitable, but all that bubbles up in John’s chest is the overwhelming urge to scream, the same as last night. It’s a feeling he’s getting much more familiar with than is comfortable. Alex shifts, rolls back to sit on the ground in front of John. It makes him shorter, reminds Laurens of the difference in their size. All of two inches that John won’t let Alexander forget.

Alexander reaches out again, this time it seems for John’s hair. John smacks his hand away. “What are you doing.”

“I’m…” Alexander winces, shuts his eyes and tries visibly to string an answer together. “I miss you.”

“That’s not what I mean,” John mumbles, and he shifts, huffs and crosses his arm over his chest. “I don’t know who you are. What are you  _ messing with, _ Alexander, what have you  _ done _ .” John can’t raise his voice to manage real questions, can’t get anything out but a flat monotone. He allows himself a look at Alexander’s eyes and longs to fall asleep wedged up next to him. Close, with his heart beating right up against Alex’s till they synchronize themselves. John doesn’t ever think he’ll have that again.

“I’m not.” Alexander stops, blinks. “I’m not any different.”

John shakes his head furiously. “You… here. Last night. I saw you. Don’t lie to me.” He huffs a laugh in spite of himself. “I always know when you’re lying.”

Alex’s eyes go huge. Ah. So it hadn’t been him who’d noticed him. “You were there?” His voice is uncharacteristically quiet and nervous. John revels in the fact.

“I saw you… up above the ground. Your eyes.” John shivers. “This light around you. I can’t think of it,” he wails, hiding his face in his hands, rubbing the heels into his eyes.

“John.”

John looks up. Hamilton only calls him by his first name when he needs his attention, and muscle memory dictates that he look him in the eye. John flinches automatically upon meeting Alexander’s gaze, but even as he tells himself the darkness in it isn’t real the memory fades out to leave the familiar version of Alex’s eyes. John thinks that perhaps he could be convinced that this is the Alexander he knows. He’ll hear him out.

Alex sighs. He fixates on a patch of drooping flora next to them, sits back in the damp grass. He stretches his back out, like a cat. John hums and watches him, observes the way he moves. Tries to tell if it’s the same as it’s ever been. It’s pretty close.

“I never meant for you to find out this way.”

John scoffs loudly. “Right. You wanted to tell me yourself, by candlelight. Something more romantic.”

Alex shakes his head. “Would you - can you not do that? Can you let me have a moment? Jesus, John.” John flinches at it. Alex rarely gets truly frustrated with him, and he’s good at admonishing - John feels terrible. His bottom lip shakes and bites it, doubly effective since it makes him physically shut up. The hard line of Alexander’s mouth softens and he continues. “I… it’s not a new thing. How old it is is not important, but suffice it to say I’ve been reaching out for longer than I’ve known you.” He eyes John carefully, appraises him. John does his best not to react visibly; he parts his lips to speak, thinks better of it, works his mouth closed and then open again.

“Reaching out.” He runs his tongue along his teeth. His mouth is exceedingly dry. “To whom?”

“It depends.” Alexander adjusts his legs, stretches them out and crosses his ankles. “On what you want. Mainly for me it’s a time thing. You never wonder how I get so much done?”

John considers it. He thinks of Alexander’s practically self-replenishing pile of papers. “So do you just… not sleep?”

Alex scoffs. “You know as well as this camp does that I don’t sleep and wish I did. No, it’s more like. I can make more time if I need it. Stretch it out, in effect.”

John can feel his eyes take in more of the receding daylight as his pupils dilate. And then he starts laughing. This whole thing is so absurd, he can’t think of anything else to do. He can feel how harshly Alexander is looking at him, and he doesn’t care. He doubles over, collapses to the ground, holding his side for the way it splits in his hysterics and with tears rolling down his cheeks. He registers, vaguely, that Alexander has lain down beside him, and by the time he’s done laughing Alex is running his thumbs along his cheeks, clearing the wetness from them. His hands, curled into the hair behind his ears, feel the same. John sighs and relaxes into the touch, not thinking of how it could singe. He’s pretty sure an actual demon couldn’t make his heart beat this fast.

* * *

 

They don’t talk about it after that. Things drift back to relative normalcy despite the odd sense John tends to have at certain moments - when Alexander disappears he now doubts that he’s simply quick and is forced to consider the possibility that Hamilton has just manipulated things. He’s fine with it, he decides. He prefers not to see him during rituals, or think about them or talk about them, and Alexander knows. He leaves to find the nearest private clearing at 2:45 exactly on a certain, rotating night each month and returns an hour later. John does ask him why he has to leave so promptly if he can bend the very concept of time, and Alexander responds by kissing his forehead and saying there are certain hours he will never have the power to change. John recalls ghost stories his grandmother told him, the kindly old lady having proclivities John is sure his grandfather had no inkling of. Witching hours, she’d called certain times of night, and John thinks these and the ones Alexander is describing are one and the same. He doesn’t say that, though. The notion feels too large to acknowledge aloud - and Alexander curls into his side. He feels warm. John falls asleep with his hand in Hamilton’s hair.

A year or so goes by. John gets shot, right through the shoulder and then his stomach - he’s lucky it missed his liver. When the initial shock wears off, he begs the doctor to rip his arm off, hysteric with pain. Alexander is right there as he drifts in and out of consciousness, reading to him. “I’ve written to your wife,” he says, when John is strong enough to be out of bed and dress himself. “You are to go home and recover there. Washington will hear none of our bickering over this, nor will he accept you staying. We will do this without you and I’ll write to you the moment we win, my dear.” He kisses John, pushes his hair back from his forehead. “I regret that I can’t escort you myself.”

John scoffs. “I’ll bet, Alexander.”

Hamilton swats him on the hip as they leave the medical tent. John reports to Washington one final time to secure the details of his leave (he pushes the word retirement from his mind) and then he goes home, to an unhappy but approved-of quaintness, at a time that turns out to be mere months before a surprise rebel victory, and Alexander, true to his word, seems to write to him even before the battle is officially won. He returns to the senator’s daughter at war’s end. They correspond rather more regularly, and more amorously, than John could have ever justified hoping for and visit whenever time allows, which is not often. There are pleasant dinners with their families combined, and time after spent discussing law, and national finance, and the advances in science and medicine that are to John’s interest - his inner child delights in such pursuits, and he keeps an eye on the latest news of related matters. Alexander, brilliant and eager to soak up as much varied knowledge as he can, humors him. John is grateful, and sometimes marvels that he has such a match.

And then, Philip is killed.

The funeral is upstate near the Schuyler residence, and rain comes down in heavy sheets. John is reminded of the night in the forest years and years ago, soaked to the bone and shivering with fear. Alexander cannot hold Eliza exactly as he wishes to, John can tell - he is distant, numb, and wishes he weren’t. John wraps Eliza in a tight embrace and whispers that he doesn’t know what to say. Eliza kisses his cheek and thanks him for being such a good friend to them, to Alexander. She doesn’t know the half of it.

John stalks to Alex’s guest room in the mansion that evening, willing down the voice inside him that says it is too soon to bother him. Alexander will crave a distraction.

He barges in on Alex, who is sitting on the floor with his back against the side of the bed, two massive tomes open beside him but a box of old journals in his lap. He’s reading one, the aged leather cover rough and shedding in his hands. He looks at John but his eyes are welled with tears, full and nearly overflowing, so John thinks he doesn’t really see him quite fully.

“I wrote about him in here,” Alex says, as John settles next to him on the floor, his lantern beside them. He smiles wistfully, through the tears, and the turn of his mouth makes them leak onto his cheeks. John leans over and kisses away the ones on the side of his face nearest to him.

John says, “Can you…” and then he trails off, because all these years and he still isn’t sure how to refer to it.

Alexander shakes his head. “There’s nothing to be done. I’ve looked. What might work is too large a risk - it could hurt Eliza.”

John doesn’t nod. He brushes a lock of stringy hair behind Hamilton’s ear, pets him a few times there. “I’m sorry, Alex,” he whispers.

Alexander snuffles. There’s something about seeing a man this distinguished cry, something about all he’s been through and it coming down to this. It’s massively unsettling. John feels like breaking down himself, just seeing him like this. Pushing that feeling down out of need to be a pillar for Hamilton to lean on, he kneels up, shuffles in front of Hamilton to settle between his spread thighs, shoving the big books of spells and lore out of the way. The journal he takes gently out of Hamilton’s hands, wraps neatly, and sets in the box, which he then shuts with a  _ click _ and shoves under the bed. Alexander’s looking at him, sort of taken aback, though the tears have stopped.

John leans in. “Breathe, baby,” he says, cupping Alexander’s jaw and running his thumb across his lips. Alexander obeys, and it’s like the pressure of the day being let out on his exhale, like he’s been craving air for ages on the inhale. John studies his face, watches him breathe a few more times. He smiles at him, hopes it’s reassuring.

He messes with the buttons on Alexander’s shirt, gets it off rather less efficiently than he’d be proud to boast about, but it’s no matter. He lets himself slow down, reminds himself that this is not the war. Alexander’s working at his flies himself, the laces on his breeches coming untied so John can scoot back and slip those and his stockings off.

Alexander’s body is still compact, but it’s changed over the years, skin a bit looser, more give to his stomach. The scarcity that war creates had trained his legs up lean but now they’re soft, and John bends in, kisses his way up the thigh to the hollow of his hip, learning the new flesh. He finds immediately that he doesn’t miss what was here before; it has been half a lifetime since he’s had Alex like this, and he longs to know him as he once did but anew. He knows his own arms have given out under something heavy more than once, knows the corners of his eyes crinkle now when he smiles. And, despite the surrounding circumstances, he has not felt so much like smiling in a good while.

John looks up at Hamilton, shaking slightly. He pushes at his shoulder. “C’mon,” he says, rising to plop onto the bed himself and waiting for Alex to follow suit. As Alex fiddles with the laces on John’s own pants, he breaks out in soft laughter.

“What is it?” John asks, suddenly self-conscious. He rakes a hand through his hair, fidgety.

“I don’t know. It’s just. A real bed. For the first time.” Alexander shakes his head back and forth. “This is so strange.”

John smiles brightly. “Yeah.” He leans in to wrap Hamilton’s hair round his fist and pulls him in for a searing kiss, moaning softly when he feels Alex’s tongue dart out to tempt his lips apart. Alexander kisses just like John remembers, demanding and sweet all at once, deep and intimate. Makes you feel like you’re the center of the world and all else revolves around you. John steps into the feeling, floats in it a little bit. All of Alexander’s energy and focus poured into him; he thought he’d forgotten it, but he hasn’t. It’s safe and familiar, right where he’d left it, like they’d simply left off long ago and are finishing the deal.

Alex’s hands go around John, smoothing down his back. John breaks the kiss with a gasp, surprised at how sensitive his skin makes itself for him through the layer of fabric. With maddening dexterity, Alexander gets the garment untucked from his breeches, and cool air whisks across the small of John’s back as the shirt separates from his skin. He shivers, and Alexander, pressed in close to his ear, chuckles. He places his hands under his shirt on John’s sides, protective but John can feel how tentative he is. “You’re gorgeous,” Alexander murmurs, turning to nibble just under his ear.

John tips his head to the side to allow him better access. “You said that the first time we did this,” he says even as he remembers it himself.

Hamilton chuckles again, breath hot against his wet skin. “I imagine I’m somewhat less seductive these days.”

John shakes his head. He pulls back and looks his friend in the eye as he grabs his hand, threads his fingers through Alexander’s. “Never,” he says, allowing the little flicker of a shy smile. Alexander’s grip tightens the lace of their hands around each other. Then he goes back to undressing him, all his focus on getting John as bare as he is. John leans back, lifts his hips to help Alexander get his bottoms off, and then he’s nude, shivering in the slightly cool air and blushing under the heat of Hamilton’s gaze upon his body. He reaches out a hand and strokes Alexander’s face with his fingertips, just to touch him, but Alexander leans in, stretches out on his front beside John and nuzzles into his hip. “This is good,” he says, voice rumbling against John’s skin.

John chuffs a laugh. “We haven’t done a thing yet.” He reaches back into the hair at Alex’s crown, naturally available to him as Alex presses his face into his hip, and pulls. Alexander moans. So. That hasn’t changed.

Alexander seems to disregard John’s comment, and he turns his face down away from him, and before John can anticipate he’s licking the thin skin of his lower abdomen. John shudders, feeling the stimulation run straight to his cock like a promise. He tugs up on Alex’s hair again. Alex hums, presses his lips though not his tongue lower, trailing little kisses down John’s belly and then skipping over his groin to continue the pattern on his thigh. John giggles when he reaches the knee, ticklish there. Hamilton smiles up at him as he lifts his leg and kisses up the inside of his thigh, back up toward his groin, but then back down the other leg. John huffs, already frustrated, and drops the leg on the bed open wider, in a move that he hopes will encourage Alex to move faster.

Alex chuckles against his skin. “Impatient,” he chides, and then he sighs, sits back up and cups John’s cock with his hand. He doesn’t move it at first, and John whines, shifting his hips back and forth. “Mm,” Alex says, entirely too noncommittal. He starts rubbing the heel of his hand at the base of John’s prick, stirring John’s blood to make him harden but not going hard enough for there to be anything more than a spark. John chases it, hitching his hips up. Alex doesn’t back off, thank God, he presses harder when he realizes John wants it such, and then he leans down and covers him with his mouth, flicking his tongue down his shaft as his throat works to take all of him. John squirms, and pants, and finally moans, swallowed down to the root by Alexander’s eager mouth. He twines his fingers in the man’s dark hair, scratching lightly at his scalp as Alex pulls off to the tip. He doesn’t go all the way back down, opting instead to suckle slowly at the sensitive head as his tongue laves out beyond his lips on the underside of the shaft. John groans and grinds his teeth. Alex always was a showoff at this, and in all truth he always deserved to show off.

Alex lets his tongue and top lip drag off of him and lowers his head, looking up at him as he licks at John’s balls. John’s eyes go heavy, drooping with sated pleasure, and he smiles down at Alex, eyes wide looking up over the plane of John’s belly. He kneads his fists into the back of John’s thighs, pressing his legs up to open him up as his tongue drifts lower, lower.

Alex only gets a few licks in before John growls and switches their positions, rounding up on Hamilton to press him back against the pillows with his weight. He slots their pricks together, hearing Hamilton hiss as he grinds against him. “God, Alexander,” he says, biting at Alex’s earlobe, down his neck, “I thought I’d never have you again. Why’d we stop this?”

Alexander laughs. “We thought our wives would care.” He nips John’s bottom lip, hard. John chuckles again and shuffles down Alex’s body, skating his spread-out hands down his stomach and legs. He props Alex up in the position he’d been in before, gets his feet planted wide so he can access all he wants to, and licks straight away from Alex’s hole up his cock. Alex croons, then lets out a long sigh as John wraps his swollen lips around him, hollows out his cheeks and sucks. Alex might like to brag, but John has expertise in this, too. He paws at Alex’s soft side, pushing off of him for leverage as he works his tongue down Alex’s length. He’s thicker than he remembers but he’s not surprised to find his tongue knows just what to do - like muscle memory, it finds the spots - the underside of his head, the vein running a bit off-center down the shaft - that make Alex light up and buck his hips, searching for the texture and firmness of John’s slick throat. John doesn’t let him get at it, pulling off with a wet  _ pop _ before he’s tempted to let it happen. He drops his face, gets down between Alex’s cheeks and works his tongue in without warning.

And Alexander  _ howls,  _ works himself into a frenzy grinding down on John. John laughs breathily as he takes it, savors the taste of Alex’s skin and takes the hand Alexander reaches down with to palm himself with his own, pins it to the mattress. Alex huffs but gets the message. John presses a kiss to his hip, pulling off to give his mouth a short break, but he circles one finger around the opening he’s left wet, slips in experimentally just to test how open Alex is for him.

Hamilton grinds down immediately, working John in to the second knuckle and begging almost right away for another, and John kisses at his hip again, works in closer to the thatch of hair at the base of his cock, as he slips a second finger in. He runs his lips up the side of Alexander’s hard shaft, letting his saliva coat his length, as he works his fingers back and forth in a scissoring motion. Alexander writhes with the overstimulation but he’s pretty much locked in place by the pressure inside him, and he goes slack after a little bit of fighting. John smiles up at him, working his fingers in and out, now, getting the tight ring of muscle loosened so he’s ready for more.

“John,” Alexander moans, his a soft little thing in the dark. John slides up to kiss him full on the mouth, and Alex hums as he hitches his leg up so they won’t be broken apart. He brushes John’s hair back, wraps his arms around his neck. John’s cock presses between Alexander’s stomach and his own and he tips his head back, letting himself grind against him for a moment. The slickness of the sweat between them makes the glide exquisitely easy, filled with perfect friction.

His hand must stutter, because Alexander whines again, shifts his leg where his knee rests on John’s side. They’re laying side by side, and John considers the options - in the end he decides he doesn’t want to let go of Alex for long enough to arrange them one on top of the other, so he pulls his fingers out, taps at Alexander’s shoulder. Hamilton’s eyes go wide for a moment before he understands, but he rolls over, and John cuddles back in. He pushes Alexander’s leg forward so he’ll spread open a little more, and Alex pulls it up toward his own chest obediently. John spits all over his own hand and goes back to preparing him, slowly, taking his time as he relishes kissing the back of his neck, his hair moved out of the way of his nape.

Alex is moaning, pressing back onto John’s fingers - he’s taking three with ease now, moaning wordlessly and constantly, and John decides he’s probably good to go. He looks around the room and thankfully spots a small decorative bottle of oil on the bedside table closest to Alex. “Grab that for me, would you?” he asks him, leaning in close to kiss Alex’s jaw from behind as Alex props himself up on an elbow and reaches over to retrieve the bottle. He squints at it in the near-dark, making sure it’s suitable, before he hands it over. “Hurry up, would you?” He arches back into John and purrs, rubbing his ass over John’s groin.

“Jesus, and you call me impatient.” John tries to ignore his goading for the moment, slicks himself up generously and then reaches around to get Hamilton matching. The oil turns out to be olive, which is lovely, because it smears thick and messy on their skin, and has the added bonus of smelling quite nice. Alex shifts and gets John’s prick right up against his hole and John grunts and bucks forward, fucking up against Alex’s tailbone. Alex reaches back and gets a grip around the back of John’s head as he grinds back against him, apparently content to just do this. John wants to fill him, though, to please and overwhelm him. He forces himself to halt and adjusts Alex once more so that their bodies are better-aligned, and then he pushes forward slowly.

Alexander shudders deeply and tucks his pelvis down, trying to find the angle that’ll let him accept the intrusion best. John lets him squirm around for a minute, completely still as he breathes in deep lungfuls of air, letting him get to wear he needs, watching the wince wear away from Alex’s face before he dares move. He kisses down Alexander’s neck and around his spine, nibbling on the skin to the side of his shoulder blade. Sheathed inside of him he feels the tantalizing pressure of Alex’s body surrounding him, and the muscle flexes to accommodate him. Finally Alex arches again, letting out a soft, broken moan. John fumbles at his hip, teases his cock with the flat of his hand, as he begins to move, arcing back and rocking forward into him at a gentle pace. Alex makes a noise of assent, a little grunt, and hitches his leg up higher in front of him. John shimmies lower down to get his hips a little under Hamilton’s, which gives a bit more room for his thrusts, a bit more drag as he presses in. Alex cranes his neck to kiss him on the mouth and John is driven the slightest bit mad by the slick push of his tongue against his own, provoking him into moving faster, and when Alex breaks away from the kiss John knows it’s because he’s finally satisfied with the pace. John keeps it, driving in quicker as he chases the beginnings of his release, the familiar tightening in his belly. He wraps his fist around Alex’s prick and strokes in time with his thrusts, feeling the fluid and oil slicking him down. He fondles at Alexander’s testicles and grabs a handful of his ass with force, panting as he drives in, and he must have struck some chord because the moan that falls from Alex’s lips is filthy and John feels his balls tighten up and then the unmistakable warmth of his come flooding over his hand.

John tells him how good he’s been, right up in his ear, as he gives him a few final thrusts to reach his own completion, feeling powerful, like he could go on forever. After the orgasm, though, his body does tap out on him, and he lays his sweaty forehead against Alexander’s shoulder and breathes against him while they recover.

Alex is shifting uncomfortably before John’s quite got his breath back to him, so he pulls out but holds on tight, figuring that if he’s got to separate them at one point he’ll insist upon further contact at another. Alex fidgets but stays put, for the most part, letting John roll him on top and kiss him with both hands full on the globes of his ass. John kneads the flesh there, moaning into Alex’s mouth. Breathing really does seem secondary; Alex’s kiss is still maddening. John wants to lose himself in it forever. He feels like he hasn’t in years, feels like that kid in the war; despite how awful those years were, John thinks he has a tendency to romanticize them, and he thinks that the reasons for that come mostly down to Alexander. In retrospect he thinks he was probably happy, then, some kind of misguided but authentic love and contentedness to be found in the chaos that he’d happily invited. Neither of them had ever been much for convention, after all.

Alexander sighs, slumps over on top of John and smiles at him from his chest. John is overcome with the desire to protect him, but he supposes all the forces in the world have already failed to do that in the way that perhaps counts the most. John thinks of Philip - last he’d seen him had been years ago, fourteen and just coming into being a man, though still with that wily, mischievous energy that occupied young boys. John knew his father and had known that it wouldn't temper out for a good while. The boy had looked just like Alexander, skin a shade or two lighter, and with a small button-nose like his mother, yes, but with the untamable curls John had remembered running his fingers through to untangle, the same small frame, the same knowing grin. Alex had looked at him with such pride, had laughed uproariously at all his son’s jokes and nudged John, whispering “Isn’t he clever?” John had felt his heart swell each time Philip would call him  _ Uncle John. _ Familiar, like it wasn’t even a thought.

John kind of deflates. He doesn’t want to bring the subject up again, wants to let Alexander have a rest from it, but he can’t think of anything else that might be more appropriate than the silence, so he holds Alex close and lets it drag on. It is late. The two lanterns - the one John had brought with him and the one Alexander had been reading by - eventually burn themselves out.

 

* * *

The next morning is dewy and misting, leftovers from the storm. Alexander pecks Eliza on the lips and tells her he is giving John the grand tour, and then he leads him by the hand out to the massive gardens on the grounds of the Schuyler house. John marvels at the endless maze of roses, a bit dizzy with their brightness even dulled by the overcast sky.

Alex takes a seat upon a bench, swings his legs up under him to curl up and look out over the fence toward the other side of the fields. He’s quiet, less excited than he had been before they’d walked the roses. John perches next to him, tries looking in the same direction to see what Alex is seeing but can’t make anything out besides the thick deep green wall of forest at the boundary of the property. He sighs, puts his chin in his hands. Alexander huddles his cloak around his body and makes a quiet, thoughtful noise that John knows he’s meant to catch.

“How are you?” John asks, a little fearful of the answer. Alexander makes the same noise again but draws it into a longer hum, and he runs a hand through his hair, undoes the plait.

“I feel like… I’m at peace. Like this is right. This is good, this is where I need to be today.” He smiles at John, or attempts to, his eyes tipped down and sad. There’s an endless well of truth in them, something so deep and promising that John thinks he would willingly fall in.

“You know, there’s something I should tell you,” Alex says, “before you find out yourself.” And he turns fully on the bench, leaning into John as if he’s about to confide a secret. John straightens up, feeling a bit too much like a schoolboy, but his ears prick up anyway. He nods to Alexander, encouraging him to continue. Hamilton bites his lip and looks away for a moment before he speaks.

“This isn’t easy to say. I’m. You don’t know everything about the - dark things, I guess - and that’s by design. I’ve kept you away from that, because I know you prefer not to know. But Eliza knows, and her parents know, and that leaves you as far as the list of people I care enough about to give a warning to go, and you deserve to know, you deserve not to be taken by surprise.”

John doesn’t know what to think. “Get on with it, Alexander.”

“So. I sort of. Uh. A long time ago, I made a deal of sorts. For the abilities I desired. The time-bending, and some of the clarity that let my cleverness come through with more force. And there were a couple times I called upon the agreement to let me spite someone.” He blushes, a light coat of scarlet that matches a rose bush next to them coming up high on his delicate cheekbones. “I saved you from Lee, that time. He killed you at first.” He says it quietly, as if ashamed to admit it. John gapes a little, but sets the shock aside.

“Anyway. I made a deal. Never paid my side in full. I think that this-” he makes a gesture to the open air, which might mean the weather, except on the day after a funeral - “might be divine retribution. Though less than divine. Hellish retribution?” 

“Alex.” John eyes him seriously. He’s trying to deflect, distract himself, keep talking so he never has to get to the point. That always ends up bad.

“Sorry. I. I’m coming up on final payment.”

“What do you mean? What’s owed?”

Alexander seems to be chewing the inside of his cheek. He looks away again, eyes wide and fearful. John is disturbed by it; he reaches out to clasp Alexander’s hand between his own two, rubbing heat into the skin. “Alexander. What’s this payment?”

Alexander frowns. He frowns so rarely that John panics, fighting down the impulse to slap it off his face, like hitting him will set it right. “It’s something… it’s something I can’t give,” he says. His voice is tiny and despairing.

John looks at Alexander, very concerned. “Well, what is it? What do they - what does it - sorry, I don’t know, never dealt directly with demonic forces, myself, as you know -  want?” 

Alex looks like he’s just seen a ghost. Perhaps he has. John considers that he might be seeing one right now. “Me.”

 

* * *

“Alexander, there has to be a way to get you out of this.” 

Hamilton whirls around on him, a stern glare across his sharp features. “There isn’t, John! There’s nothing! I have searched and searched, for countless hours, I have  _ looked, _ Laurens, and there is  _ nothing." _ He steps down from the bookshelf and slumps to the floor against it, sighing and taking off his glasses to rub at his eyes. “There’s nothing. I’ve asked all my contacts, and they all say - there’s no way to outsmart it, John. A demon won’t let you go back on your word. And they have worse than my word, they have my signature in my own blood. They don’t play fair; they never warned me about this, my children weren't part of the agreement. They weren’t even born yet.” He shakes his head, eyes shut tight. “I have to let go, or they’ll keep taking the people I love, until I’m alone here anyway.”

John leans back against the desk behind him, crosses his arms. This has certainly been enlightening. They’re in Philip Schuyler’s office, though it appears to be more of a full-blown library, and John has a sneaking suspicion Alexander spends more time in here than not when he’s at his in-laws’, judging by his easy familiarity with all of the sections. Alexander reaches up, looking exhausted, and pulls a cotton-bound book down from the shelf just above his head blindly. “Look,” he says, opening to where a crease is worn into the spine of the volume. John takes the book from him, reads, from the only English on the page.

_ If the Daemon the Witch hath summoned hath receiveth the name of the Witch in that Witch’s own blood, then the Daemon hath ownership of the Witches earthly Soul, and shall collect upon maturity of the agreement. He who tryeth at falsing or cheating such an agreement will surely be come upon with endless suff’ring. After sealing in blood the Daemon is happi to make good on His part of the deal, but requires more blood after the agreed upon time. Thus shall take all. _

_ The Daemon will not, so long as the Witches Soul hath been granted to him willingly as agreement would state, visit any Extra suff’ring upon the mortal kin of the Witch, least not in mine own observation. I havn’t seen a Witches son be taken after the Witch does surrender His life. Thus it would be best if Witch does surrender, and make haste so doing, so as to avoid further suff’ring for those that surround Him. _

The rest of the pages are covered in illustrations and diagrams, none of which John thinks he ought to know anything about. He flips through the gold-edged pages of the short and ancient book, realizing that it is all handwritten. “I’d advise you not to do that,” Alexander tells him, and John feels a strange dizziness lift as he raises his eyes from the book to look down at him. Alexander is smiling sheepishly at him. John slams the journal shut and throws it on the desk. 

“To hell with it!” he exclaims, pacing furiously. “There has to be a thing we can do. Some way you can weasel out of this.”

Alexander shakes his head, rising from his knees only to sit on the stair that leads up into the back of the library. More shelves. Likely more infernal curses. John thinks of the trance he’d been under staring into those pages. “Can’t do a thing. I think I have a little time, but I - I don’t think I’ll last much longer. I can hear them calling me, John. I’m doomed to a lifetime of torture in Hell once they kill me, and it’s close by. Lapping at my ankles.”

John stops short. “Wait a minute.” He goes across the room and leans down over Alexander, gets in his face so he’ll listen. “You said they kill you themselves.”

Alexander nods slowly, giving John a peculiar look. “Yeah. Real painful mess, if I understand. My cowardice toward it is what got us here.”

John turns to the book, ignores the strange heat seeping into his hand and the thrum of his blood in his heart as he palms at the cover. He gets it open to the same page as before, coughing on the dust that puffs out. “Look here,” he says. “Look here, Alexander, look.  _ The daemon will not visit any extra suffering on the kin of the witch once the witch surrenders his life.” _

Alex blinks at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” John says, leaning in to rest his forehead on Alexander’s, pressing them close as can be, “you don’t let them kill you. You lay down your life, and your family will grieve, but you don’t let them - don’t let  _ this _ \- kill you.”

 

* * *

Alexander throws himself into the plan like he does all conspiracies - eagerly and without restraint. He provokes Burr via the press, via the government, via word-of-mouth. John feels petty about it but is secretly proud of Alexander’s clever tongue. By the time they open the letter daring Hamilton to meet him in Jersey, they have cooked up things to say that no man should have to hear from anybody, much less a person he once called his friend.

The sunrise comes over the horizon and paints the gently swaying grass in a straw-yellow haze. The air in New Jersey is sweet, tinged less with sea salt and closer to the farms down in the Carolinas. John breathes it in and savors it. He is astride his horse, running his hand over his pistol absently. If this goes badly - and it could go badly - he will have to take them both out himself, and the rest of their company, and then himself, so as to avoid any questions. Their plan is perfect, other than the slight possibility of unpredictable mishap. But they’ve got it pretty well rehearsed. If John never liked Aaron Burr, and if his name will be permanently sullied in the graces of the public after, it is more a happy accident than anything else.

Alexander draws first position and aims perfectly, just pass Burr’s head and into the trunk of the tree behind him. Burr reacts as any man would, though John will say his aim is uncharacteristically on. He gets Hamilton in the stomach, and John feels sympathetic pangs in his own side, remembering the bullet that’d gone through him during the war. He doesn’t think he’ll ever fully forget what it’s like to be shot.

Eliza is waiting with her sister at the hospital, and the doctor tells them it’s no good, he’s bound to succumb. John holds Alex’s hand even after Angelica and Eliza go to sleep, sitting with him and watching the life seep from him slowly, slowly. He sweeps Hamilton’s hair back, kisses his forehead tenderly, tells him goodbye. Slips out. He needs to go home before facing the service, hold his wife and daughter for a while. 

 

* * *

Hamilton’s funeral is practically a party, which is exactly how he would have wanted it. Friends stay behind to chat over wine, and stories of his scandalous exploits, half true and half rumored, all equally fun, are bounced around the halls of the mansion. Eliza’s children have accepted Frances as one of their own and John lets his guard down and drinks some. He laughs tearfully over memories with other guests and hugs Mrs. Schuyler and Anglica.

Eliza comes over with their youngest on her hip, Philip but not really. John will have to get used to that. He’s clad all in black, and John finds himself struck by the thought that they should not have to make mourning clothes so little. “Thank you,” Eliza says, pulling John down for a kiss to each cheek, “for being such a good friend to my Alexander.”

She doesn’t know the half of it.

He tells her, of course. Eventually. Alexander said he hadn’t told Eliza of the hell-and-torture bit of the deal but John has no doubt that she knows it just the same, and he sees it in her eyes when she meets him at the church the following year for a visit, staring at his headstone with terror in her eyes. “Hey,” John says, his voice echoing off the stones in the otherwise barren space, “he got out. We found a way.”

She breathes, and breathes, and then she collapses, laying on John’s chest and sobbing into his shirt, and John holds her through it, letting her shake into his unwavering solidity, because he’s already had his time to cry with the relief of it, and now she needs hers. They sit together after, and walk together in the sun, and John tells her what they’d done, how close they’d been, and Eliza says she’d always known. John feels like he should be flabbergasted but cannot bring himself to be.

“Hamilton told me,” she says simply, with a nod. John looks out toward the horizon, toward the ocean. He imagines the breeze at the beaches he and Alexander had stood upon while fighting the war, and the air in the south, and the air where they’d met, and the air in that forest the night between late-fall rainstorms that had proved so fateful. He doesn’t tell Eliza of that particular encounter. He thinks he will keep that for himself.

**Author's Note:**

> much of this was written while listening to metric. [is anyone surprised?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7HflV9zmYE)  
> this was a reward to myself for officially finishing act ii of the play i'm working on! i do work for real-live money sometimes
> 
> i would adore comments if you enjoyed this, they're so encouraging
> 
> thank you very much for reading this and if you want to hang out i'm on tumblr @veryimposing


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